We can’t breathe

We can’t breathe inside congested public buses where non-robots can’t control their urges. We can’t breathe in schools where teachers see us as sexual objects. We can’t breathe in homes where men feel that they own us. We can’t breathe at our workplaces because somehow being at a workplace is our weakness. We can’t breathe inside religious places because we’re not supposed to be there anyway.

We can’t breathe in public places, in offices, in schools, in universities, in bazaars, in hotels, at award shows, and at home!

We can’t breathe in conference rooms because our genuine concerns label us problematic, when we talk about how deliberate political neglect is hurting us. We can’t breathe in open streets because men inside big vans can kidnap us. We can’t breathe on a street we always walk on, because a jilted lover may be roaming there with a loaded gun or a bottle of acid.

We can’t breathe in courtrooms where our character is tainted to indescribable levels just because we dare to ask for our rights. We can’t breathe in family gatherings when we are told to never ask anything about our inheritance. We can’t breathe when we see our savings going down the drain because the man who promised to marry us wants a big fat dowry cheque. We can’t breathe when we are blamed for being childless. We can’t breathe when our marital status – single, divorced, widow – allows society to pass snarky remarks and call us ‘potential home wreckers’.

We can’t breathe when the man who signed the marriage papers just the other day slaps us across the face. We can’t breathe when society asks us to file an official complaint against our husbands because a bruised face is not sufficient evidence. We can’t breathe when we remain quiet and decide not to press charges.

We can’t breathe on motorways. We can’t breathe when a social media campaign reminds us of the times we were wronged. We can’t breathe when, while waiting for our cab/bus/car, a shiny car stops right next to us and the man inside opens the passenger door – winking at us. We can’t breathe when our cab driver make us feel uncomfortable and threatens to drop us off on an empty road.

We can’t breathe when we think about all those times we chose to remain silent. We can’t breathe when we realise that we’re supposed to stay silent. We can’t breathe because we are tired of being silent.

We can’t breathe when our pictures – stolen from our social media profiles – are uploaded on social networking sites. We can’t breathe when we have to wait for years for a cyber crime cell to pay attention to our complaint. We can’t breathe when those who are there to protect us blame us for everything that goes wrong.

We couldn’t breathe yesterday; we can’t breathe today; and we won’t be able to breathe tomorrow. This is because our country, our so-called motherland, has told us, quite a few times, that it hates its women.

We can’t breathe when we see a fellow journalist being harassed at a political rally (a rally that promises to bring change). We can’t breathe when we see how government officials make casual comments on women journalists’ complaints against cyber harassment. We can’t breathe when the first notification we see in the morning carries a list of expletives.

The words ‘I can’t breathe’ were said by George Floyd as a police officer knelt on his neck. The words are a plea of the oppressed. The white officer, blinded by his privilege, ignored his pleas. In the same manner, the authoritarian ruling elite here continue to ignore the pleas of the country’s oppressed – so, we say, as loud as we can, ‘we can’t breathe’.

We the women are tired; we’re tired of explaining to uninterested misogynists exactly what we mean when we say ‘my body, my choice’ – that our consent matters; we’re tired of replying to fraudsters who, in their tweets, suggest that women want to wear bikinis on streets; and we’re tired of pretending that there is light at the end of the tunnel (because we have already understood what Metallica’s James Hetfield said years ago, then it comes to be that the soothing light at the end of your tunnel is just a freight train coming your way.)

We know that in a society which is ruled by a prime minister who thinks that men are not robots, by mullahs who think that there is something called ‘light beating’ of a wife and its allowed, and by privileged women who will bring religion to justify their internalised misogyny, the only soothing light that we will appreciate is the one which will take us to the Highway to Hell – where we’d be living easy, living free!

The writer is an assistant editor at The News

Email: aimen_erum@hotmail.com

Twitter: manie_sid